My point isn't that balance can only exist in two states. I'm questioning whether it's "worthwhile" to make those improvements. Everything improves and it wouldn't make sense not to improve something constantly for WoTC, but what makes this issue more important of an improvement than, say, racial bonuses. Or issues that still crop up like DM's having a hard time running monsters with spellcasting.
It's not like WoTC has been idling around. They've constantly been changing the game. But we need a reason why this dichotomy is prioritized beyond "Some people would have more fun." Because while that may be true, more people might have fun if something else was improved first, like having a Ranger that feels better to play.
Then don't bring up things like balance perfection. Bring up, "Even if that is worthwhile, surely there are more important priorities first?" You had specifically said (bold added; italics in original):
At the end of the day, D&D is a game that the designers just cannot predict. They can go the way of the board game with well-established, unyielding rules of play, but that tarnished the TTRPG experience. Even if the rules were completely balanced RAW and were required, some groups will end up homebrewing and getting frustrated by the rules without realizing how their homebrew effected it anyways.
This is clearly saying: you cannot achieve perfect balance, and individual groups are likely to deviate in one way or another, so it's not worth pursuing. The
whole point of my original statement was to reject this strawman argument against
perfect absolute balance.
Now, your new argument is in fact something different, and worthy of discussion. On the side of "why would addressing this be worthwhile," well....we literally have
twenty years of
furious debate and
thousands of people complaining about the disparity between casters and martials. We have the designers of PF2e openly saying that they
had to build a new system in order to address various problems, including the caster/martial disparity. (I hear they did a pretty good job! ...but I also hear they mostly succeeded by reinventing a lot of things 4e had done, just with better presentation and relatively minor tweaks.) Point being, even if there may be an argument about relative priorities (your aforementioned Ranger rebuttal), it's pretty much a fact that a
significant number of
vocal, engaged people--aka, the ones who help drive interest in the game--would be much happier if these things were addressed. Hell, the very fact that you felt a thread needed to be made so that a productive discussion could happen is pretty much conclusive proof that this is a major priority for a large enough section of the (vocal, engaged) fanbase to warrant attention even from people who don't care or actively oppose such changes.
On the other hand, for your relative-priorities argument, two responses. One: It seems to me we already have several
reasonably good,
reasonably functional Ranger options. AIUI, the Drakewarden subclass was received with pretty high praise, seen as the way the Beast Master should have been implemented originally. People also seem to feel the TCoE "Primal Companion" option is a solid patch on the existing Beast Master--perhaps not perfect, but a major improvement. And Gloom Stalker is often considered, again, at least pretty decent. This does not mean the Ranger class is perfectly fixed--it just means that (a) WotC has
already done a
lot of work on this front for years, and more importantly (b) the tools
already exist to make a superior baseline Ranger when we get "5.50e" or whatever people want to call the side-grade update.
Two: somewhat branching off of that last point...this isn't something 5e has meaningfully addressed over the course of its lifetime,
unlike the Ranger. The Ranger has been a clear, obvious problem almost from the day of release, and WotC has spent a lot of effort on it already. They've worked really hard, for literal years. If it
hasn't been fixed by now...doesn't that mean some deeper reworks are necessary? And if we're already deep-reworking one class, why not also address the others that retain bad, unfair design from 3rd edition? It's not like this is an either-or prospect, we
can expect WotC to work on more than one class at a time if they're intending to modify the core books. (Frankly, I
want the ranger to ditch its spells, other than perhaps a spell-focused subclass analogous to EK but Druidic in focus, so that we can reduce the superabundance of classes capable of casting spells. Far, far too many ranger spells are just
class features masquerading as implicitly opt-in spells anyway!)
I'd agree that it would be unfair to not provide certain characters these options to meaningfully interact with things, but that's not what's happening. Every character has the means to meaningfully interact with all pillars of play, you aren't silent and blind just because you don't have a feature that tells you what you can say or see.
I absolutely, 100% reject the use of generic features as justifying other classes getting more access. That is the thing that IS unfair, full stop. If "the game has three pillars" has meaning, every CLASS--not just every character--should meaningfully participate in all three. Or they should just admit one of two things: (1) Some classes are simply designed to be better at playing the game than others, despite their past statements (implicitly or explicitly) to the contrary, or (2) they have presented the pillars falsely and they are not actually core to the design of the game.
With the game as it currently exists, each class is, implicitly and on rare occasions explicitly, a peer to every other class. The rules and fluff go out of their way to present the classes as
equivalent choices, where you're supposed to be getting trade-offs. A trade-off of
diddly-squat is not a trade-off. Wizards are not meaningfully worse at combat than Fighters. But Fighters
are meaningfully worse at non-combat than Wizards. That is not fair: it is designing a game where different classes are both implied and stated to be peers, but actually
making a game where Wizards are simply better than Fighters on the whole, even if there are a few small areas where Fighters can nevertheless claim a victory.
So I see it crop up that all characters must have equal importance in all the pillars. Though, that wouldn't be the case even if the only class in the game was a wizard, simply because players might not take equal exploration or social-based spells. And you might think every character should have equal opportunity to choose those options, but, in a way, they do.
STOP.
I never said that. I went
dramatically out of my way never to say the bolded thing. Please, for the love of God and all that is holy, STOP saying that that's the argument I'm making, because it's NOT, it NEVER has been, and it's INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS to have my arguments dismissed with a strawman a second time in as many posts. I feel
deeply infuriated by the repeated substitution of absolutist perfection when I have tried so, so hard to explicitly reject that while making my arguments.
I am not, have not ever been, and (to the best of my ability to predict) will not ever be saying "all characters must have
equal importance in all the pillars." I said that all
classes must have
meaningful contributions in all the pillars. Those two things could not possibly be more different. It is pointless and, indeed, almost surely bad for the game to pursue
equal importance in all the pillars. But you do not need
equal importance in all the pillars to have
meaningful contributions in all the pillars. Right now, the Fighter class as a base chassis offers exactly two
potential things for pillars other than combat: Action Surge (a
hilariously laughable contribution to non-combat pillar actions, since...it literally just lets you do the same thing everyone else does
six seconds faster) and two extra ASIs at 6th and 14th so long as the DM permits them to be spent on feats (and, y'know, the mathematical superiority of actually increasing ability scores doesn't win out like it usually would).
I would not even
dream of asking for Fighters to have the kind of ridonkulous levels of utility even a half-caster like Paladin can provide (e.g.
ceremony,
find steed,
zone of truth, just to name non-subclass spells). I just want the Fighter class
itself to offer some actual non-combat benefits that aren't
laughably bad. (Alternatively, it would be acceptable to ensure that all Fighter subclasses have actually worthwhile non-combat utility, both those subclasses that already exist and any that may come later, since that still guarantees "the Fighter class" offers it, it's just subclass-dependent. This would mean, for example, that EK wouldn't need much change because it already has spells!)
Class isn't your character. They make up a majority of their stats,
Irrelevant. FIghter is presented as a peer of Wizard. If they are not peers,
don't present them as such. And if they
are peers,
make them such. Peers do not have to be absolutely perfectly equal. But they should be, y'know,
peers. The player is choosing between options presented as equally
valid: not "
absolutely perfectly equal in every possible way such that it isn't even in principle possible to choose between them except by personal preference," but equal in the sense that anything one "gives up" is compensated for by something it "gets" in return. The way the game is currently designed, that is simply
not true of the Fighter. It
does not get ridiculous superlative mastery of combat; it is
at absolute best, under
ideal conditions, only very slightly better at combat than a Paladin or even a Wizard, yet both of the latter gain a LOT of non-combat resources.
To appropriate an analogy made during the D&D Next Playtest, they claimed that Fighter was supposed to be 100% combat, while Rogue was say 80% combat, 20% utility, and Wizard was 60% combat, 40% utility. My problem is, was, and has always been (a) no class should be designed to be 0% in any of the pillars
if "pillar" actually means what it's been sold to us as, and (b) those numbers are hilariously off, because it's more like Fighter is 100% combat, Rogue is 95% combat 35% utility, Paladin is 99% combat and 30% utility, and Wizard is 85% combat/85% utility. The trade-off is HILARIOUSLY biased; Wizards get
dramatically more utility than they give up in offensive power, or (structuring it the other way) Fighters give up all the utility and get...a tiny smidgeon extra combat. It just doesn't add up, when the game has implicitly (and, as noted, on rare occasions explicitly) said, in terms of this analogy, "Every class's total is supposed to add up to 100%."
but you'd still have race, backgrounds, ASI's, proficiencies, and flavor characteristics. You can make a hardened warrior type with a scar and bulging muscles and give them the class of warlock. Really, they could be a Bard, cleric, or even wizard.
As already stated, I absolutely reject this argument. Those are generic features anyone can possess (excluding, as noted, the bonus ASIs, which are an unusual case...but unfortunately severely weakened by the specific implementation). Generic features anyone can possess are the
common shared baseline--they're stuff
before the aforementioned percentage analogy. Yes, every Fighter has race, background, etc.
So does the Wizard, who can just as easily exploit those features. THAT is the problem.
Like, let's say we do factor those in. Now I will be the first to tell you that races are
not balanced (see: pre-Fizban's dragonborn), but for the sake of argument I'll leave that can of worms aside and assume that they are--and, indeed, I'll even grant you a majorly favorable position, and say that in the percentage analogy above, the collective sum of race and background ("ASIs and proficiencies" are irrelevant since...you only get those things from class, race, or background, or by active DM fiat) add up to 20 percentage points worth of non-combat utility. (I would personally call that
vastly overinflating their value, legit to the point of comedy, but as stated, I'm trying to grant you a favorable position.) Using the above numbers, that would make the Fighter 100% combat/20% utility, whereas the Paladin is 99% combat/50% utility and the Wizard is 85% combat/105% utility.
The problem is still there. The percentages still don't add up to even REMOTELY the same value.
Which, perhaps humorously, goes back to my earlier question (that was ignored): Why is it we get Fighters who (allegedly) are absolute beasts in combat but get diddly-squat outside it (other than features everyone gets), but we never get a spellcaster that
cannot even in principle contribute to combat (other than features everyone gets)? Unless and until you can explain that asymmetry existing in the rules options, it seems pretty clear to me that there's a nasty bias in D&D's design that points (as it always has) away from Fighters (etc.) and toward Wizards (etc.)
Now, there IS a point that could be made here. If the universal features were
really really rich, e.g. if they were say equal to 50% of the total utility that the absolute maximum utility-focused character could provide, then that would help wash away a lot of the differences. There would still
be differences, sure, but the relative amount of difference matters less and less the more you put in. If, say, Wizards were closer to 50% combat/80% non-combat (weak but not strictly
bad at combat things), and Fighters were closer to (say) 100% combat/10% utility (
very weak but not totally
inept at non-combat things), and race and background contributed a whopping 50 percentage points to utility, then we'd end up with Fighters at 100% combat/60% utility (sum 160) and Wizards at 50% combat 130% utility (sum 180). That's still a very clearly Wizard-favorable situation, their sum is still clearly higher, but the
relative difference is actually pretty small. The problem with this argument is...those generic options are
nowhere near able to provide that quantity of utility. They're closer to
a tenth that significant, because magic remains
stupidly powerful, even with the various ways 5e has reduced its power relative to 3e (this more reflects on how utterly unforgivably broken 3e was, but it's still a relevant problem for 5e.)
And while you may say you can't make the perfect nonmagical warrior, again, what makes that more important than the fact you can't make a one-to-one drizzt. Or that you're forced to have a cantrip as an elven fighter even if your elves are considered mundane in your world.
That's...irrelevant to my argument, so...I have no response to it? I'm not sure why you even mentioned it.
What makes this change a priority?
See above. Rangers have already been given attention. In fact,
most problem areas of 5e have already been given lots of attention. Races have been reworked, sometimes heavily; several weak classes (Monk and Ranger in particular) have been given multiple reworks or strong subclasses to shore them up. There have been some kludges along the way (e.g. it's pretty clear Hexblade was a kludge solution to fix how stupidly weak Bladelocks were, but ended up creating a great deal of resentment from folks who see "attack using Cha at 1st level" as a stupid stinky power-gamer-only thing.) But one of the longest-standing issues...one of the issues inherited from 3e, and likewise inherited by the other 3e-descended game Pathfinder, something
admitted by that game's own designers, remains unaddressed. We've already reworked races, and certain specific individual classes have gotten a LOT of band-aids.
That's why we should do something more complete.
